Letters after the war
by Hesiod
Summary: "Wonderful and terrible, contemplative and brash; Fleur is endlessly fascinating and you are just small in the grand scheme of things." One-shot.


Dear Hermione,

It is strange to write a letter to yourself, but you've always excelled by living within your own head. How the gears crank and turn, how there is no better clarity than thinking things through in your own mind. Even _this_ is a ploy of logic. Thoughts are more real when they're written on paper. You know this. When they leave the safety of the mind and exist in the open world, they become something tangible - they suddenly become ideas with both weight and consequence. They become important.

But this isn't about you or thoughts or letters. It's about _her_. Fleur Delacour. The name you know so well; the woman you've come to love in all her crystalline beauty and weaving complexities. It's a love that's taken you over and set you anew, as integral to your life as the magic that flows through your veins.

But the thing is, being with Fleur is like being caught in a snare.

It's a trap - a danger zone. An ill-fitted, unwise adventure that is exhilarating and frightening all at once. You know better than to play with fire. You know better than to be with her. But then again, you're a Gryffindor: bravery is in your blood and you always did have a knack for finding trouble.

And Fleur, of course, is a bombshell.

She is fire and ice, burning you with the simplest of things; freezing you over with chilled promises and swinging indecision. She is meant for you, you'd like to think. Made wholly for you, the way she fits inside your mind with such comfortable ease and familiarity.

How can two people react to one another in the way you do - in explosive perfection, in tempered chaos - and not be made that way? Not be predestined to meet and test each other, break each other open and then rebuild from ruin? It cannot be coincidence. This type of love is not coincidence.

You can feel it in the way she shatters at your touch, all sparks and heat on porcelain skin. In darkened moments at the dead of night, when your lips find hers in the darkness, she stirs something deep within you. Drawing you out. Provoking you. When gazes meet like a hurricane crashing through a city, destroying everything in an upheaval of bricks and mortar and dust and debris, there is something powerful there. Something slow and tempered, waiting to be released. It is the parts that pull at you and drag you back to her after a row. The reflex to kiss her when you should instead be apologizing. How you ache when she says your name.

It's won you over.

But who are you without this?

Because when your eyes first met in the Great Hall years ago, you never expected to fall for her. Not when you were young and impressionable, barely your own person; not when your gaze kept meeting again and again each year afterwards. Certainly not after she was married.

And after a thousand stolen glances, after a thousand unsaid words, it was you that went to her.

In the way a tornado can't help but devour its surroundings, Fleur had devoured you by her mere presence. You didn't stand a fighting chance. She took you in with a sweep of ocean blue eyes and you were hers. How her gaze lingered and yours couldn't help but drop to her lips; the helpless way you stood frozen in your spot, stomach twisting with nerves, breath heavy and impossibly hopeful - in that moment, you were completely, utterly hers. And you think she knew that all along.

It's funny.

Hermione Granger: at the whim of a married woman. Now _that's_ rich.

What a pitiful truth, a painful reality; ingrained in your being like the day of her wedding.

The same day your heart broke and any glimmering, lasted hope had been dashed from your mind with fierce determination. She looked beautiful beyond words, beautiful beyond comprehension. She was so happy that day, lit up and _alive_. Seeing her in that moment, you knew you couldn't deny her anything. You knew you wouldn't stop chasing her. Couldn't stop chasing her.

So did the only thing you could: you tried to avoid her.

It was a girl's crush, after all. A silly little thing, to think you might have any sort of claim on her. To think she would choose you over her many and endless admirers.

She is a goddess of a woman; a girl so far out of reach you might equate her to the sun for all her radiance. How naive to think she could be yours.

And the same still holds.

The same still holds despite the fact that when you found yourself back at the Burrow years after the war - years after you and Ron didn't work out the way Bill and Fleur _did -_ you still couldn't help but look at her. When you couldn't sleep at 3am and went down to the kitchen only to find her there, it was as if the universe was trying to bring you together. And when you retrieved your glass of water and tried to go back to your room, she had called your name so softly it rooted you in place and broke your resolve to forget her altogether.

She invited you to the porch.

"The stars are quite nice at this time of night," she'd said, in her lilting French accent. All the innocence in the world, but she had _that look_ that perhaps had allowed you to hope otherwise.

So maybe it was Gryffindor courage that had you on her lap that night, kissing her like the world itself was burning. Gryffindor courage to put your lips on her neck despite your inexperience, entwining your shaky fingers because it was all you could do to keep your heart from bursting from your rib cage. And Gryffindor courage when she asked if you were okay - if you felt fine - and you had lied and said yes.

After that, you couldn't stay away.

Something always brings you back to her. It's a plague of sorts. She's wrapped herself around your mind and you've wrapped yourself around her body. She's swallowed you like the ocean, engulfing the whole of you; wrapping you up like sea-slick moss in the deep, cold unknown. It's a peculiar balance of guilt and desire, festering in you like a sweet cancer to your bones. You can't escape it. When you close your eyes, you see her face. When you sleep at night, she's in your dreams. When you wake in a sweat and you're consumed by the very thought of her, there is no resolve but to see her again.

Lips, hair, cerulean blue eyes. You crave to figure her out. This strange woman that makes you come undone; equal parts fierce, equal parts brilliant. You are drawn to the enigma, longing to know what makes her tick, discover the mind that flows behind her taunting beauty. She is a cogitation of juxtapositions, a frustrating puzzle that you couldn't hope to understand. Wonderful and terrible, contemplative and brash; Fleur is endlessly fascinating and you are just small in the grand scheme of things.

But it doesn't change the way you want her.

You don't think anything could change that. When you think about how her golden hair splays out over your pillowcase, body flushed with heat that _you_ created, you know nothing could change that.

You've yet to wrap your head around the way she wants you back.

So instead, you make love to her like the war hasn't ended yet. You forget rationality. Forget the vow she made to another man, forget any semblance of morals and your shivering Gryffindor spirit. When you are with her, there is only this. Eyes locked on her parted lips, fingers dripping down her rib cage; a breathless whisper, a heated tremble. Every sacred second, every fragile piece of it. All heady and entirely selfish, you take her in like she's the the very air you need to breathe. There is war in the way you touch her. There are promises you couldn't hope to keep and promises you wish you could. There is home in your stolen kisses, safety in your forgotten nights - and something, something absolutely_ unshakable_ in the way she looks at you.

And in the end, it is all temporary.

Because you're not so foolish to think that this will last forever.

All things fade; even this - _especially this_ \- these midnight trysts filled with searing kisses, confessions that hold no consequence. Her body in your hands, unraveling into something meant for you, meant _only for you_.

It will run dry, the same way your throat runs dry when she brings up the word 'us' and a future that doesn't exist. It will. It _will_.

Because you are smart and you _know_ this only ends in one way.

You don't get to keep a single part of her.

You can get lost in the familiarity: the curve of her bones, the dips of her body; you can whisper your lips across the freckles that dust her shoulders, the soft bumps of her spine. When she sighs in her sleep and you think she might be dreaming of you, you can imagine her in a different life and in a different time where she is yours, you are not a liar, and this has not gone horribly wrong.

But the truth is, you are a fool.

Fleur doesn't belong to you and she certainly doesn't owe you a damn thing.

When she whispers she loves you - she loves you so much it hurts, she's loved you for years and year and years - between kisses laid on your fluttering pulse; it becomes tainted with the tendrils of doubt in your mind. It feels like it physically hurts, because it's not fair that you must bite your lip to hold back from saying_ 'then stay'_. It's not fair that she gets to say these things and then leave you every night. It's not fair that you cannot ask her for more - and it's not fair that you always want to.

Because you are selfish.

Because you are weak.

And because you love her.

You love her, you love her, you love her; with every atom in your being, with the entirety of your heart and everything else you have to give. You are in love with the very essence of Fleur and nothing, not even the thought of Bill or bloodlines or the impending sense of doom could shake that wholesome feeling, that_ fact_, that you have fallen in love with her.

You are more the fool than anyone you know, doing something so selfish as to chase a girl who cannot be yours. You have created a world in which reason contradicts the tug of your heart, morality sears the fleeting high. You have placed yourself in an impossible position that only ends with the cold reality that love does not equate happiness, love does not work itself out, and love does not make things right.

And through the years, you've realized that some things are not enough.

So maybe you are meant for each other in the way perfection can only lead to chaos and thoughtful rebalance. Maybe you ignite each other and fill the gaps that never seem to close, healing wounds that the past has blasted open and the darkness has overwhelmed. And maybe this is the only good thing that came out of the war; the only pure and honest thing, the only accomplishment worth your wear and the shambled pieces of your heart - but _it is not enough_.

And perhaps it should end.

You have loved her for so long that you're not even sure how to do that. How could you live without your bombshell Fleur? Your matchstick romance? Without her words in your ear, the weight of her thoughtful gaze? The way she knows how you take your tea; that one time you got sick; how she can tell when you'd rather not talk and is insistent on those days that you should? How could you go on without her?

The thought seems absurd. She is meant for you. You're not strong enough to let her go. You aren't. You can't.

You'd become small and scattered and empty, you'd run back to her the way you always do, the way you can't help but do. You're hers even if she is not yours and you know that, _you know_. She's the thing that breaks you. That one love that will never quite leave - the one that changes your mind and molds you, sends your heart soaring in the wrong direction. The kind that makes you figure out who you really are. The kind that changes everything.

And she really has changed everything.

But you are not good for each other. Not anymore; not in that innocent way she lifted you up and made you feel whole. Not in the way that made you feel okay, that made _this_ okay, in that dreadful, temporary sense of the word. In that way that you couldn't believe she was kissing you for the first time years ago, but you hoped she wouldn't stop; the way your mind thought_ 'wow'_ and the breath left your lungs when she peeled off her shirt and then there was just skin and collar bones and collar bones and skin. The same way you thought you loved her before you had her - and then when you had her, you realized you knew nothing about love, nothing about want, and nothing at all in the wake of her.

This is _Fleur_. This is Fleur Delacour, your Fleur, your precious, daring, confusing Fleur. This is the Fleur you know and love and won't stop loving even if it takes the whole of you; this is Fleur as a tornado, as a hurricaine - Fleur that could bring down cities and Fleur that is the sun. This is the Fleur you won the war for, the Fleur that you came home for, the reason you _didn't die_ all those times you probably should've and the reason you would if she'd only say the word.

This is the Fleur you have to let go, because it'd be the only selfless thing you've ever done for her; the only good thing, the only right decision.

And this is you not being able to.

Because you don't know how.

You don't know how to do that.

You just don't know _how_.

All you know is that when it's late and you're both sated, laying languidly amongst a sea of bed sheets and naked skin, you think about the words you can never bring yourself to say.

_"Leave Bill," __"Stay with me," "Don't go back,"_

Xxx

* * *

**Well, it's done! I wanted to do something a bit different. I've always been enamored by the thought of Fleur and Hermione starting something while one or the other was unavailable. I'm a sucker for the we-can't-keep-doing-this complex. **

**This piece has sat in my drafts for a couple months now. I have over 10k words worth of rewrites, all that are so completely different they may as well be different stories. This piece was . . . difficult to put together. I cut out nearly 1k words from it before posting. Such hell. **

**But fuck it, I wanted to finally post it and get it out of my brain. **

**Hope you enjoyed it. Have a good one! **


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